By Captain Donald S. Inbody, USN (Ret), Ph.D.
Some part of the military has been voting absentee since the American Revolution.
That’s not a boast. It’s a fact that gets lost in the noise every election cycle, when pundits rediscover the military ballot and treat it like a novelty. In 1775, Continental Army soldiers fighting in New Hampshire were allowed to vote by proxy at a town meeting back home. The logic was simple: serving your country shouldn’t cost you your voice in it.
Two hundred and fifty years later, that logic still holds. The law has caught up… mostly. But the obstacles haven’t disappeared. They’ve just changed shape.
I spent 28 years at sea in the United States Navy. I commanded USS Duluth. I watched Sailors and Marines try to navigate absentee voting from ports and anchorages around the world, often without reliable mail, sometimes without internet, occasionally in combat zones. Later, as a political scientist at Texas State University, I studied the history and mechanics of military voting in depth. What I found surprised me, and it should concern every American.
In 2013, I testified before the Presidential Commission on Election Administration about the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, known as UOCAVA. The commission wanted to know what was working. My answer was blunt: getting a blank ballot to a military voter overseas is largely a solved problem. Getting the marked ballot back in time to be counted is not.
That’s the gap. It’s been the gap for decades.
Here’s how it works in practice. A Sailor deployed to the western Pacific requests an absentee ballot. The ballot arrives by mail, fax, or email. If it comes by email, the voter needs a printer. Not every ship’s library or deployed duty station has one. If they do have a printer, the ballot may be formatted for U.S. letter-size paper. Overseas, the standard is A4. While A4 is close in size to the US standard letter, the difference is enough that the ballot can print incorrectly or fail to scan properly when returned.
If the ballot arrives by mail, it has to go back by mail. The Military Postal Service interfaces with the U.S. Postal Service, and for ships at sea, that means waiting for a mail pickup. Every day waiting is a day the ballot isn’t moving toward its destination.
The MOVE Act of 2009 helped. It required that states have ballots ready at least 45 days before an election, which gives enough time to mail a ballot overseas and get it back. That was a genuine improvement. But 45 days is a floor, not a guarantee. Elections run close to that deadline. Mail runs slow. Deployments don’t pause for Election Day.
The stakes are not abstract. In 2000, overseas military absentee ballots influenced the outcome in Florida. In any close election, and we’ve had several, the military vote can be decisive. More than 252,000 active-duty troops voted by absentee ballot in 2016. By 2024 that number was 585,000, which was about 45% of all active-duty personnel eligible to vote.
These are real votes. They should be counted.
There’s a myth worth dispelling. People assume they know how the military votes. The assumption, deeply held by operatives in both parties, is that military personnel lean strongly conservative. That may be true for the officer corps. It is not true for the enlisted ranks, which make up roughly 85 percent of the military population. Enlisted personnel are racially and ethnically diverse. They track closer to the general American population than most political commentary acknowledges. They are also, notably, more likely to identify as Independent than their civilian counterparts.
The military doesn’t vote as a bloc. It votes as a population: complex, varied, and far less predictable than either party assumes.
What can be done? Several things.
First, service members and their families need to know their rights.
Under UOCAVA, you don’t have to be stationed overseas to qualify for military absentee voting protections. If you are absent from your voting residence, your domicile, because of your service, you are eligible. A Sailor stationed in Norfolk but living 200 miles from her hometown in Arlington can vote absentee in Arlington. That’s the law. Many service members don’t know it.
Second, the Federal Post Card Application, the FPCA, is the starting point.
One form handles both registration and ballot request. It can get you on an automatic list to receive ballots for every election in the coming year. Use it. Update it every time your address or contact information changes.
Third, if your absentee ballot doesn’t arrive in time, there’s a backup: the Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot, the FWAB.
It’s a blank, universal write-in ballot that works for any election in any state. Print it, fill it in, mail it back, postage paid. You can use it to vote for President, Vice President, U.S. Senate, and U.S. House of Representatives. Most states will also accept it for state and local elections, but you must check your local requirements.
U.S. Vote Foundation exists precisely to make this easier. The tools are here: ballot request generators, state-specific forms, election deadline reminders, voting assistance officers. No service member should miss an election for lack of information.
The hardest part isn’t the law. The law is mostly on your side. The hardest part is the logistics.
You carried your rights into service with you. Don’t leave your vote behind.
About the author: Dr. Donald S. Inbody is a retired U.S. Navy Captain who commanded USS Duluth, was Professor of Naval Science at the University of Texas at Austin, and served 28 years on active duty. He holds a PhD in Government from the University of Texas and is the author of The Soldier Vote: War, Politics, and the Ballot in America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). He testified before the Presidential Commission on Election Administration in 2013 on the status of military and overseas voting under UOCAVA.